Forgiveness
by littledarkangelhippie
Summary: He couldn't keep chasing after those dreams anymore, no matter how much he'd once wanted them. He was tired and the taste of sin was sour on his tongue now. He just wanted to show her he was done hurting her. (naruhina. slight narusaku)


**A.N.****: This story is short, compared to what I usually write, and has a pretty ambiguous ending. It's a one shot, and I'm a hundred percent sure I won't continue it any further than that. It came to me a few months ago and I began it, but never quite got around to finishing it. **

**Warning****: Mature content.**

**Disclaimer****: I do not own ****_Naruto_.**

She smelled like sin.

It surprised him, this fact. All this time he never thought of taking in her scent, and the one time he did, she smelled like hate and regret. He shut his eyes as he pressed his nose into the curve of her shoulder, her even breaths kissing his hair, clouding in the darkness of the room where the stench of burnt out cigarettes and alcohol was thick and heavy, like another atmosphere weighing down on the both of them. The bed sheets were crumpled around them, sweaty, and her hair was a tangled mess around her head. Her body was thin and small beneath his, faint scars from a past neither of them ever spoke about anymore marring the smoothness of her skin that no longer existed, webbed shapes and quick, short slices of whitened marks that were once red and angry, now silent and dull. She touched his chest, his back, his hair, his jaw, anything to keep him there in her arms for just a little longer.

But he was already drawing away, and they both could feel the end nearing.

His eyes flicked across her, a hasty afterthought of a glance as he untangled himself from her limbs and the papery sheets, and he felt something sink within him.

She was both absolutely beautiful and horribly hideous to him.

It had nothing to do with her face, nothing, really, about her appearance. She could be quite pretty, with bright, alert, light-colored eyes and soft-looking hair, and a friendly smile on good days, when the past was just the past and she didn't think about his blue eyes anymore, and a small enough face that may have fit nicely in any pair of hands, should she wish to move on—although she never will... No, not her exactly. He couldn't remember a time it had ever been about her. Maybe in the beginning, when their hearts were still broken and the wounds were still fresh. Back when he didn't notice the sounds outside of them, banging across the walls around them, blaring sirens, angry yelling and lively downtown-noises that came with the red-lights district, when her eyes made him lose his ground and her voice soothed a place down within his soul he didn't think could ever be reached.

That was a better time, she believed. They both despised life and where it had taken them. They both missed the past, what could've been and what would've been, and they both found relief in each other. Solace, where no one else had ever offered it. Bliss, where no one else could give it. It was a good part of life, where reality could not reach them and they could forget that everything had changed.

Such warm and pretty lies that they kept at the back of their minds, fading away so quick.

Yet he was pulling away again, turning from her, slipping his clothes back on and heading toward the door, a generic off-white color that came with every motel they had ever escaped into, hoping for something they had lost years ago. He used to stop and look back at her, smile softly and say, "_I'll see you next time_." Now, though, he opened the door and stepped outside, letting it shut behind him, and disappeared into the cool air of beating nighttime. She lied there, waiting.

Nothing.

Just the smell of cheap booze and musky perfume and the sounds of the village outside.

~~...~~*~~...~~

The lock in the door was loud, and he winced when it echoed as he turned the key. He slipped inside the house and silently shut the door behind him, locking it once more and waiting there in the darkness of the front room, slipping off his sandals. A clocked ticked somewhere, but that was the only noise. The floorboards creaked beneath his feet and the steps up the staircase whined, tightening the guilt in his stomach. At the top of the staircase, he pushed away the thought of letting himself fall back down them, and made his way to the bedroom. The form beneath the sheets brought both a wonderful sense of ease and the terrible weight of self-disgust upon his shoulders. He went to the bathroom to wash off the scents from his skin and the anger from his mind. At least he smelled like soap now rather than dirty motel sheets and hot sweat.

When he climbed into bed, he was careful, slow and cautious, sliding under the covers and settling beside the sleeping woman, hoping she would not wake. But luck had never been a friend of his. If it were, he wouldn't be here, sneaking into his own home and wary of his own wife.

"Where were you?" she asked softly. Curious. Not accusatory or spiteful. Gentle as only she could be, unassuming, innocent. And he felt his hear throb for a moment. What kind of a monster was he to ruin such a thing like this?

"Paperwork," he finally said, swallowing around the lump in his throat. The lie fell limp, overused and only half-thought. He knew immediately she didn't believe him—hell, he wouldn't believe him either—just in the way her breathing briefly paused. He waited for her to call him out on it, waited for her to snap apart the thinly veiled falsities that came with this decision he'd made, some vague time ago, but she said nothing. Her breathing continued, even, soft, faint, and her body remained still. He figured, at that point, that she was done talking to him. She, after all, was not the confrontational type. And he could thank all the stars in the sky for that, for perhaps the rest of his life, but never be good enough to actually deserve it.

It was only sheer fate—cynical and disturbed and hateful as it was—that allowed him this.

And so he wasn't expecting it, after the silence had finally floated down upon his skin and coated him as thickly as his mistakes had, like grime and dirt and sticky filth that he would never be able to wash off no matter how many showers he took, when she shifted behind him, slowly, cautiously, and laid a small hand against the middle of his back. A thousand thoughts flitted through his mind, dizzying, whirling, and stopped altogether, like a tourniquet cutting off the heavy outflow of blood from a sickening gash, as her lips pressed lightly against his ear.

At one time, he remembered, he had been cut there, cold dark metal slicing across the shell of it, where the smoothness of her lower lip brushed now, when he had been too careless to pay more attention. Could she feel the imprint of it, a mere ghost of who he used to be, back when they hardly held hands and his lips had never known a woman's? Could she see the little scar that had not quite closed up? Did she recall how he'd scratched it so often it bled for days before she started slapping his hand away gently whenever he reached it up to do it again?

Her breath was a fluttering tickle of warmth and mint and sweetness across his cheek, and he felt something harsher than guilt twist tightly in his stomach, his fingers curling so deeply within the sheets that his knuckles turned white. This was different from the distant, detached seductions from within the dilapidated motels, different from the hurried, grasping touches and the empty, desperate noises. It had all been just a blind clutching at the past, nails bleeding from the effort it took just to hold up the image of what could've been, what would've been, but what shouldn't have been, and never will be.

This was the feeble reminder that she would always be forgiving. A saint, standing still in the center of a promiscuous, perverse chaos. The reassurance that she, by some impossible miracle, still loved him very much. And always would. It was her steadfast belief that he would always come back to her no matter how many times he betrayed her that made her so quick to forgive, and he knew that well enough.

And he felt himself breaking beneath her touch, how her slender fingers trailed lightly down his arm, how her lips whispered such sweet little things against his skin, which burned beneath her sleep-warmed flesh. He fell a little deeper into her caresses, let himself be pulled a little further into the sway of her kindness, and felt himself uncoil beneath her kisses. Her hair was a midnight river, which swished freely across his shoulder as she moved closer, around him, coaxing him onto his back, her hands moving across the soft ripples and wrinkles of his shirt that she pushed and rolled up under his armpits, her tongue tracing pictures on his skin.

He wished she didn't have to nip and suck over the preexisting marks leftover from his mistakes, that she didn't have to feel she had to prove something to him.

Her words were enough to drive a a rusted knife straight through to his heart, pounding painfully in his chest as she slid her slender hand down beneath the waistband of his pants, breathed across his mouth and swirling in the depths of her shining, starlit eyes. There was a knowledge in them that frightened him, and he knew, right then, that she had always known, and that whatever secrets he had tried so hard to hide from her had never quite been secrets at all. Not to her at least.

That was the one thing he would never admit he admired about her. Her ever observant eyes, her fact-soaking mind and her unfaltering attention to detail. Nothing got by her, not when it came to emotions. Most especially his.

Sparks lit behind his eyelids, and his protest was lost in an unexpected hiss. She was quick to respond, attentive as she was, and straddled him, hands freeing him, only pushing the cloth of his pajama-pants down a little lower as her thighs trapped him beneath her. Her nightgown shone like ink, spilled across the porcelain of her skin, a shock against the darkness of the room, and she shook her long hair behind her shoulders, which were tensed in uncharacteristic determination, an unmovable motive hardening her eyes just a little, her full lips set in a soft line. His hands came up hesitantly, brushing across her thighs, unsure what she would do, and felt his hips jerk upward as she lowered herself down, guiding him in, head tipping back and mouth going slack.

Had she been waiting for him all night?

The wet slickness of her thighs, settling at his sides, and the trembling, silken muscles wrapped all around his length was enough proof that she had. And what a foolish man he was to keep her waiting—to hurt her so.

She gave him no time to think, no time to speak, as she began the rhythm she wanted. Quick, rough, rocking over him and holding his hips down with her hands, which scorched almost as hot as her breath, huffing across his mouth and throat and chin, rising up and then falling down, the subtle muscles in her legs helping her. And the slight thrusts he gave, hands twisting into the sheets and teeth gritting around his air, were pleading and hopeless and apologetic. Every time he rose to kiss her, she drew away quickly, immediately, and he knew what this all meant, through the fog beginning to cloud his mind and the fire scorching across his body, meeting her thrust for thrust as best he could.

This wasn't for him.

She needed release, and he could see how much it had taxed on her, how much her stress and worry and anger and sadness had built up before she couldn't take it any longer. She wasn't doing it because she was trying to win him back—hell, if he'd been leaving her he would've done so already. She just needed _this_, the sex, the warmth, the knowledge that he still wanted her, _somehow_. And that was a horrifying fact to him, how base, how primitive this all was, and she had always been anything _but _this.

And he understood it.

She just wanted to be with him, but she had already figured, in that sweetly innocent mind of hers, that she could never have him. Married, yes, he was hers. But his heart belonged to someone else. So if she could just have this, his body and nothing more, she was fine, even if he'd given it to someone else, she just needed to know he would still be there for her. She wouldn't go to anyone else for this, like he had, but she had already admitted defeat, and he could see that in her eyes, never quite meeting his and not entirely glassy with pleasure.

She was in pain.

"Hin—" he began, his hands coming up to wrap around her hips, halting her. She grinded against him anyway, the bed shifting and sighing under her rough, jerky movements. "Please... Stop..."

She closed her eyes, her hands moving to the thin straps of her gown, sticking to her skin in her sweat, settling for rolling her hips instead, forcing _some _friction. The straps slipped off her shoulders and her hands pulled down at the front of her gown to reach her breasts, tweaking and pinching the darkened, perky nipples, mouth opening to gasp; her muscles clenched tighter around him and he flinched, letting out a shaky sigh.

"Please don't ignore me," he said, only letting one hand pull hers from her work, for fear she would continue if he let go of her hip. She only shook her head, flattening a hand to his chest, just beneath his thundering heart, to push herself up, in spite of the hold he kept on her, too strong for her to break no matter how hard she pushed. "I'm so sorry..." he finally whispered.

Her head fell, long, midnight hair falling across her shoulder, tickling his skin, and then letting it drop to rest on his chest, panting, trembling—from frustration, from anger, from unresolved want, he didn't know—and he held his breath, suddenly so scared.

Did she hate him now? He wouldn't blame her.

The warm liquid that dripped onto his skin was all he needed to know how much it hurt her.

"Don't," she mumbled, nails lightly scraping against his sides, up his ribs. "I just can't anymore."

"I—"

"Just for tonight," she interrupted, shifting to meet his gaze, where a million things passed before they settled on an imploring, beseeching look. "Pretend I'm her."

Not a single word in the world could describe how he felt, but sorrow came somewhere near it.

Her hair was a smooth pool of nights spent alone, waiting for him to come home, all around her head and across the pillows. Her thighs were the arches that made up the soundless, white-hot dreams he couldn't remember having, growing up in a village where deceit was the same thing as trust, and hatred was as normal as breathing for him. Her breasts were heaving mounds or softness and they fit nicely in his hands, squeezing and kissing and licking, and her stomach, were the faintest hints of muscle softly clenched and tensed and tightened, rivulets of sweats trailed down, down, down between them, where obsidian curls intermixed with golden, sunshine-stained ones, where he thrusted, glistening with her liquids and pulsating with her sounds. Her mouth was open for him, his tongue, teeth gnashing when they moved too quick and nipping when she moved too slow. Her hands were flames, searing trails down his back and chest and arms and hips, fingers tangling in his hair and pulling him down closer.

He didn't want to pretend. He didn't want to lie any more.

He wanted to tell her, even as she moaned and whined and her eyes were hazy and glassy and unseeing, so beyond words, the both of them, that he didn't know when those nights spent sleeping with his past became just that—or when, instead of the pale soft-looking hair, he began to see her moonless, starless midnight locks. Or when he began to taste the cigarette skin or smell the sin-drenched clothing. When he began to hear the yelling and the sirens and the red-lights' noises that kept him awake, or when he began to see the scars again, the scars of a past he didn't want to remember anymore...

He wanted to tell her that the dream had ended, and all he'd been doing, for so long, was chasing after what would've been, what could've been, but never will.

But there, as her back rose off the bed and the faint muscles in her stomach strained, and her arch-like thighs wrapped around his hips, and her breasts crushed against his chest so snug and close his breath left him in a rush, there was her release. Her body tensed around him, arms clinging at his shoulders and lips parting at his ear, and she tightened around him, soaking the bedsheets, fluttering silken wetness, smearing and slippery and coating his thighs, and he was spilling inside her, before he could even think to pull away or warn her, and the heat rose, exponentially, and suffocated the both of them, for a second or two, before reality slammed back in and he fell, half draped across her, breathless, thoughtless, boneless.

He wanted to tell her, clawing at the slippery walls of the abyss he plummeted down through, sleep drowning him and dragging him in deep before he could think to act, that he hadn't pretended this time. That he was with her the whole time.

He wanted to tell her she smelled like white tea and cool autumn nights.

Her mumbles in his ear, such hot and solid truths, was all he heard before his eyes fell shut to sleep, wrapped up in her gentle arms.

"I forgive you."

~~...~~*~~...~~

**A.N.****: Where did this come from? No idea.**

**A similar story I'm still editing now (and will probably post soon) is actually a little more emotional. In _this _one, Naruto and Hinata are married, but Naruto keeps asking himself what it would've felt like had he been with Sakura instead. He soon realizes that it wouldn't have been what he'd thought it would, and decides he'd made a mistake.**

**So, yeah. **

**The _other _story, however, is different. Naruto is with Sakura—though not married—and is actually pretty happy there. Except _Sakura _isn't faithful, and Naruto, eventually, isn't, either. I'll have that up soon enough, just need to finish editing.**

**Anyway, please review and thanks for reading! **

**(I'm not into writing one-shots, but this has been sitting in my computer for way too long already. I'm actually not fond of this, to be honest.)**


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